Pulling Back the Curtain on the Wizard of Real Madrid

Every time I write on this subject, self-doubt creeps in. Barcelona’s possession game has seeped into the soccer inteligentista social network, forever altering its philosophical foundations and how we view the “beautiful” game. Every time a defender passes to a goalie, we don’t roar with cheers, but rather applaud quietly in a Starbucks while sipping on a latte and flipping through the Guardian. And if the goalie passes to a defender? We stand up abruptly and spill that latte all over our designer jeans, but catch ourselves before beating our own chests. We are civilization, we tell ourselves. Xavi would never dream of doing such a thing, we whisper in our own ear.

Yet when I look at Real Madrid, the doubt of the writer creeps in. I wonder—am I merely imposing linguistic order on a chaotic universe? At some point, “dark matter” and “black hole” are just technical terms for “fucked-up shit.” The last time I grappled with this subject, I grasped for Aristotelian examples of warfare. Now I turn to a more nefarious extended metaphor: college basketball in the United States.

A caveat—I am a Kansas University fan, born and raised. Thus, I have seen the two contrasting offensive trappings of Roy “Judas Brutus” Williams and Bill “Hillbilly” Self. To your surprise, I side with the man who scarred so many of us so long ago, Mr. Williams. Roy’s offensive game plan was simple—push the tempo, run quick offensive sets if possible, and try to capitalize on turnovers. The result was high scoring games, although Roy never won a championship at Kansas. Mr. Self, on the other hand, prefers the half-court style. The offense goes through a series of set plays, trying to set screens, play high-low give and go, or capitalize on backdoor cuts. Kansas did win a national championship under Self, but the 70-point scorelines leave fans restless for the triple-digit Williams era. At least me.

In these two contrasts—the half-court and the fast-break offense—I place Barcelona into Box H and Real Madrid in Box F. Barcelona is a crossword puzzle: you patiently peruse the questions and tips, constructing your answers word by word. Real Madrid is Sudoku on meth: sometimes you fill an entire box or line in minutes, other times you glare at a blank page. You can’t predict where or when the Madrid attack will materialize because the tempo is the key, not the specific decision. Madrid is a series of staccatos where the notes don’t matter, as opposed to a lush Catalan crescendo.

Both offenses present problems, mind you. The Messi dribble/Xavi chip/split pass had its share of struggles last year when Essien sat on the Spaniard and Ashley Cole stuck to Messi like glue. With the Chelsea back line forming a catenaccio bunker, Leo faced the daunting task of dribbling into an army while Xavi had no offside trap to spring; he would make his ceremonial pause, lift his head, and see the Blues’ back line huddling around their own goalmouth. Only a wonderful Iniesta strike after a defensive gaffe assured Barcelona’s progression. Can you imagine a more narrow victory?

As for Madrid, the fast-break offense runs on a fuel of confidence and athleticism. Pellegrini regularly uses all three substitutions in a game—unlike Rafa Benítez’s, his rotations are not some cerebral exercise in planning. No, they are necessary, because no human being can press for 90 minutes a game, two games a week, and not suffer a physical breakdown. The Sevilla comeback exemplified both concepts. Despite going down by two goals, Madrid mounted a historic fightback fueled by pressure and, well, more pressure. Like ravenous sharks, the scent of the first goal entered their nostrils and then things got nasty.

While many pundits want to paint the second Galactico era as a shoddy sequel, the remarks of Pellegrini and the play of the merengues suggestotherwise. This past summer, I feared that Manuel would try to impose his Villarreal short-passing ethos on this Madrid side. Instead, Manuel has favored a fast-break offense and a full-court press. Like Barcelona, Madrid likes to press deep with three players to disrupt the opposition’s buildup play. However, unlike Barcelona, Madrid does not patiently construct their attacks after winning the ball. While the fullbacks overlap, passes backwards do not populate the game stats. Rather, as in the glory days of the pre-Shaq Phoenix Suns, the offense favors split-second decisions over methodical calculation.

Of course, the inherent tension of that last sentence merely highlights my dilemma in articulating this ethos. But that difficulty comes from the accepted Barcelona baseline of “pass-decide, pass-decide” football. Only you can decide if I’m defending a fast-break, full-court offense, or painting nihilism in technical terms more flattering than “fucked-up shit.”

I’ve already made up my mind.

Elliott is an American soccer blogger who follows the beautiful game around the world. He writes regularly for Futfanatico.com.

Pulling Back the Curtain on the Wizard of Real Madrid

I’m a Culé myself but I like looking deeper into the dichotomy of the Clásico, and this article does it well. Perhaps it’s just me getting caught up in the duality of the fixture, but I really do feel like with the beginning of the Guardiola era, it’s taken on a whole new meaning – on top of the countless others that have been accumulated over time.

I like that you posit this rather than argue it. [IMHO. I apologise if you were arguing it!] There’s a unique pleasure in the thought – and sight – of the Barcelona that appears to embody the classical unities. As much as I like it also I think it’s good to resist becoming dogmatic about it. I think the easy binary would have been acceptable had both teams been aiming to achieve the same effect and Real failed, but that’s not the case, is it? It’s quite possible to assemble a good team out of odd disparate energies. And a successful one also.

(I had to rewrite this because something happened and it deleted itself–I still don’t know what happened–so I’m hoping this makes as much sense as the first attempt)

An interesting thing: I am also a Jayhawk through-and-through. What’s also interesting is that I too am a Roy Williams style fan, despite his treachery. When my friends and I watch the current Kansas teams play, we more often than not describe the games starting with “boring” and then grabbing our thesauruses to find suitable synonyms.

While I see your point to a degree, I don’t connect Real Madrid with the run-and-gun style simply because I don’t think they’re playing the same tempo at all. I see Real Madrid as looking to clip the ball downfield rapidly, yes; I see them as trying to counter attack, yes, but I don’t see them as being free-flowing in the way that you’re suggesting. The Williams-era KU teams were open and movement-oriented, which I don’t see in Real Madrid games, where the only people involved in attacks are the strikers and one, occasionally two attacking midfielders. And if the ball is turned over, there’s the doble pivote to stop most of the counters to the counter.

Against Lyon in the CL, it wasn’t that Lyon were organized and it wasn’t that they stifled the myriad attempts Madrid made to swing the ball from side-to-side, up-and-down, pass-and-move, but rather that Madrid didn’t care one iota to do any of that. They wanted to play a tactical game that was neither fast-paced, nor slow. For example: does a run-and-gun team start Xabi Alonso and Mahamadou Diarra in midfield? I don’t see that as “offensively risky” and I didn’t think the game was anything other than tactical pants-shitting. As I found the match against Barcelona this weekend. Gago and Xabi Alonso were the fulcrums of a run-and-gun team? Not in the least. And Pellegrini hasn’t shown himself willing, in a single one of the matches I’ve seen of Madrid’s (maybe 20, at this point), to take the risks you’re suggesting. He’s a conservative coach and that he is in charge of a squad of players who happen to be fast, is just a matter of coincidence. He’s not arranging them to play forward-thinking passes, but rather to stifle and counter with one or two players. And they’re all world-class athletes, which is where Malagas and Valladolids get beaten.

And if Real Madrid and Barcelona have different tempos (and I think we’re all in agreement here that they do), then if RM really is run-and-gun, then Barça–the antithesis–must be something of a ponderous machine working to put tiki-taka into the same breath with catenaccio. But, alas, ask Stuttgart, ask Bayern Munich last year, ask Inter from the group stage, as Athletic Bilbao two weeks ago, ask yourself from the 2-6 to the 2-0 if you really thought RM was playing faster, was playing more aggressive offense. Yes, the ball is passed around the back a bit, of course it is, it’s called possession–Roy Williams didn’t instruct his team to throw the ball directly at the hoop whenever they touched it and hope that a taller, faster guy would get onto the lobbed ball and score a layup.

I would, actually, argue that the tenets are the same in the way Roy Williams approaches the game and the way that Guardiola does: the ball is ours, we panic just a little when we don’t have it, we play high-tempo, pass-and-move, get the ball from side-to-side, take a shot if you have it, but pass it if you don’t and get yourself into a better position. Take a man on if you have to, trust in yourself, but remember that you’re a member of team with other options. Michael Lee? Never once drove to the basket, but moved to the open position for the kickout. There is no kickout on Madrid, merely a more talented version of the kick-and-rush, where Cristiano takes on as many defenders as are in his way. With Kaka on the field, there are better options and it does resemble the run-and-gun a lot more, but it’s still bottled up under a conservative film of sitting back, tracking back, and playing hard defense.

I think the true genius of Pellegrini is that so far, with one glaring exception, he’s been able to goad opposing teams into attacking his defensive scheme too much and then the long ball works to perfection. Run-and-gun? Not at all. Steven Nash is the run-and-gun, Xavi is the run-and-gun, but Xabi Alonso? Gago? Lassana Diarra? Please.

So does that mean they are pass and move to Messi or Ibra? And the other 8 players?

From what I’ve seen, the gameplan generally revolves around getting the ball to Messi, sorta like KU’s “Collins center of offense” approach this year. The difference is that one has been touched by God.

Also, I’m pretty sure we can always point to specific games to show dips or hiccups in a general pattern. Based on this logic, the Champions League semifinal from two years ago when Barca could not beat United means they are not the shining white knight metaphor for the beautiful game. Ergo, you cite the recent final, ergo I cite the 1980’s ‘Quinta del Buitre”, ergo ad finitum mas ad hominem

I’m generally very sceptical of applying basketball analogies to football. The pattern and pace of the games are very different, the number of scoring opportunities exist in different universes and the ways in which possession changes (in time, space and manner) aren’t at all alike. The analogy may have worked a bit better pre-shot clock, but I would guess that I am the only one here old enough to remember that time, and would profoundly protest any attempt at equating Barca’s tiki takka to the Four Corners (you really had to watch an entire half with one offensive possession to believe it).

All that said, I think Isaiah has the better of the basketball-framed argument here, but I certainly can’t claim to be impartial. Or perhaps the better comparison is to Pete Carroll’s Princeton teams, full of aspiring Xavi’s looking to make back door passes to guys who had one tenth of Messi’s athletic talent.

And Elliot, I think you are looking at the wrong stats. Let’s ask El Sid (Lowe) about passes:

[quote]Last season, Xavi completed almost 100 passes at the Bernabéu. Last week, he completed more than all of Arsenal’s midfielders put together. This season he has made over 400 passes more than any player in Spain; in the Champions League, he is 400 passes ahead of anyone from any other club. Even his own team-mates are 300 behind.[/quote]

I also wanted to take up Bret’s point. The Clasico has always had a duality to it, but it is important to remember that the “identity” of the two sides has not always been the same. The post-Maradona blaugrana teams of the mid-80s featured some of the most brutal play in what was a very violent Liga; they were about as far aesthetically from Pep’s team as is possible within a quarter century or so.

@ursus arctos Good points all around! I chose the basketball analogy not because of dogmatic similarity, but because I see contrasting tempos in the offenses of both sports.

First, stats about total passes and pass completion mask a value judgment about dribbling/aggression/shooting.

Second, nobody can deny that Xavi is the grand master pass, but I’m not sure I would categorize this Barca edition as the same “juego tram tram” as the Dinho/Deco/Etoo version. In fact, I would struggle to point to any recent stunning first touch passing combinations of more than 4 players.
And I can hold the high card here because no merengue fan could EVER feel nostalgia for a Cule side, right? RIGHT? RiGhT?

Like the brown bear, I am weary of cross sports comparisons and analogies. They don’t work as well as we want them to (no exceptions), sadly. (The same, of course, applies to sports and music. No more ‘basketball is like jazz’, universe!)

I can watch Barca play all day and be entertained, but almost fall asleep watching a team play a half court game for four quarters. I don’t remember where it was, but I once read a post/comment saying that Barca:San Antonio Spurs, which I cringed at. They’re both dominant (the time periods that were compared, anyway), they’re both organized extremely well, but I struggle to connect the dots beyond that.

By the way, on the topic of Xavi’s passing in some of the comments above – does anyone have such stats for Xabi Alonso? I would be interested in seeing his efficiency.

I am completely un-wary of basketball/soccer analogies. Obviously they don’t “work” if you’re looking for 1:1 correspondences, and they can become absurd as they become too specific (Xavi and Messi are not running the equivalent of the Malone-Stockton pick-and-roll) but at a high enough level of generality the juxtaposition can be illuminating precisely because of the differences. I mean, my mistress’s eyes were nothing like the sun, either, but hello centuries-long tradition of romantic verse.

@Brian Phillips Brian, I would argue that cross-sport analogies don’t work as well as “mistress’ eyes/sun” precisely because they are at once too close on a surface level and too different when one looks at all closely.

There’s a reason why Will didn’t use “daughters’ eyes” or “mother’s smile”. After all, we need to be careful about false compare.

@oscar Opta would have stats for Xabi Alonso’s passing efficiency, but I’m not aware of a source where they are available for free (they sell them to media organizations and clubs). Optajose’s twitter feed is a possible source of such tidbits, but inherently hit and miss (as well as being multi-lingual).

@ursus arctos I certainly take your point, but I still say compare bravely and see what happens. Elliott’s Roy/Madrid scheme makes perfect sense to me, not because a stat says Z but because Madrid in full flight actually does give me the feeling of a basketball fast-break (as did, say, some of Holland’s counterattacks in Euro 2008): everything happening in a compressed timescale, massive advantages lasting tenths of seconds, fate turning on telepathy and twitch. There are any number of reasons why that’s “wrong,” but I’m not prepared to say it doesn’t mean something.

As far as attacking goes, this article is very astute; though when you look at the defensive styles of these teams the positions seem to be reversed – for Barca “tempo is the key” – when to press, when to curtail with the abrupt foul, when to compress, when to strategically bend (but not break). Conversely Real defend in a percentage game, drilled orthodoxly, banked in lines.

The key difference is in the transition between phases of play: Barca springing towards the ball (or player carrying it) when it is lost, and then spreading out when it is regained – essentially a redeployment in an axis across the pitch. On the other hand, Real move up and down the pitch – as you rightly note – rapidly advancing when in possession, retreating back to their entrancements when without it.

Well basketball analogies don’t work for me. They might be illuminating to others, but for me the fast break connotation from basketball doesn’t do much to illuminate Madrid’s counter attacks, or for that matter any other football club’s counter attacks. Having played both sports, though soccer only casually, may be the issue here. I understand we are talking about a comparative systems analysis, but again, its all apples and oranges for me.

Compared to football, basketball is short and condensed, where in football, unless you are playing with a bunch of 4 years olds that simply follow the ball around, is a lengthy endeavor, that in the case of Barca, has great width to it. The greatest flowing basketball I ever played was on the streets, the pick up games, not the systematized game that either was developed for run and gunning it or full court pressing, slowing the tempo down. Your eyes work differently in each, your breathing is different, hell the way you use your head is different. Not sure if this makes sense and it may be taking this in a direction away from the post. I guess ultimately for me the comparison organically does not come together.

Barca’s tempo is insane and I do dare suggest that their opponents would confirm this. Again maybe the comparison doesn’t work because the role of the ball in football is so much more an externality than in basketball.

It may also be that because I grew up with football culture that such a comparison also irks, but if the comparison works for you, then charge on, my own biases are certainly on display here, but hey rock on!

@Luna I’ve also played both sports and, for me, soccer has the pointguard and futbol has the enganche/armador/Number 10. This player often determines the tempo of the game – with a brilliant passer like Xavi, you stroke the ball around and look for openings. Meanwhile, with either Diarra or the competent but not quite as creative Xabi, you take fast break points when you can take them.

I, too, have played both sports; I also watch both’s professional offerings with a frequency at which I don’t really feel like broadcasting in a public forum. I will testify that the parallels are more than apt, at their most basic both games are essentially the same concepts, played on vastly disparate-sized playing fields. As Brian once said in his flapper days, the difference between the two is, and I’m quoting roughly here, the highest levels of soccer take something any child can do and make it excruciatingly hard, and the highest levels of basketball make something particularly hard to do and make it look childish easy. Now, I can’t attest to what team or scheme or Don Nelson concoction Real Madrid have fleshed out to be this season — they’re really more Yankees than anyone else. (Since the holidays Real Madrid have actually been giving me flashes of James Cameron and his Avatar: Based On The Novel “Push” by Sapphire, which I’ve still yet to lay eyes on, but that one’s another can of worms entirely.)

Barcelona, however, is easy; based on their most basic principles (pass-move, pass-move), Pep’s incarnation of Barcelona bears a striking resemblance to Tex Winter’s triangle offense, currently employed by the Lakers of Los Angeles (though only, like, 57% of the time, and that’s some biased generosity if you’ll ever see it) — when both are played to, or at least near, their apex, of course. I won’t be the one to compare Messi to Kobe or Xavi to….uh….Lamar Odom?…. as Brian earlier said, it gets a bit “absurd” when you start comparing Xavi-Messi offside-trap-conquests to Stockton-Malone pick-and-rolls. But the beauty and success in both comes from their basic ethos’, mainly: possess the ball, find the open man either before or during the spacing around you’s development, pass him the ball, repeat until open shot appears, take shot, make shot. Based on movement, like a Spielberg dinosaur.

@Elliott “Meanwhile, with either Diarra or the competent but not quite as creative Xabi, you take fast break points when you can take them.”

But on the other hand, the most successful usage of run and gun basketball the past couple of years were the Suns up until 08, and they relied very heavily on having an elite point guard…

And as was pointed out brilliantly by Ell-Ess, defensively the relationship shifts entirely. That’s not to say these analogies can’t work on an abstract level, but for me there are so many qualifiers needing insertion.

Having gone back on this in my mind, I wonder if the closest thing to Barcelona wouldn’t be the half court set, but rather the triangle system. That makes a lot more sense to me, intuitively; you have a working system that takes a lot of time and savvy to integrate into, but once it’s done it’s very solid and hard to derail. Passing and movement is the key, and there’s even room for the best player in the game to take over and do his thing, should it be necessary.

@oscar I would love for Madrid to sign a creative midfielder a level above Guti – I concede that Guti is no Steve Nash, although the two are of comparable defensive tenacity!

I can definitely see the principles of the triangle offense in the Barca play, but also the Princeton offense mentioned earlier – after all, isn’t a backdoor cut very similar to beating the offside trap? Both require you to beat a defense based on deception/timing, not a dribble or power.

I agree that player comparisons are a bit tough, although I see just a little bit of Shaq in Ibrahimovic. Just a wee bit…

If it is open season on comparing this rivalry to other sports, please indulge me for a second while I pull out a particularly unlikely idea: these giants are like competing philosophies of cycling.

The root of the difference is in the composition of the teams. Real, with their policy of buying the galactico, insist on purchasing the finished article whose styles are already fixed. The xx million Euro player joins the team on the strength of their established abilities, and this includes their tendencies in transition of play. Knowing that they have to justify their immense cost, the galactico fits somewhere between the narrow certainty of a man who knows from his transfer fee that he has a mandate compelling him to be the most extreme version of ‘himself’, and a superhero in a badly written cartoon who always defaults to using their superpower no matter what the exigencies of the situation may be; hence Ronaldo charging forward regardless of whether into blind alleys or open vistas, Kaka’s use of the through-ball like a man whose Pro Evolution controller’s X and Y buttons are unexpectedly reversed, etc…

Alternately, most Barca players have not gone through this selection by transfer. Instead they are taken from the youth system because of their ability to fit in the Barca style – and this style is possession, its key tendency is turning with the ball, and its key ability is agility. Now this explains a lot of Barcas attacking movements. What it doesn’t explain is their ability to outrun and out uscle teams when defending, given the number of players with a lightweight build in their team. I see players like Xavi, Iniesta, Pedro as being an entirely new evolution of football player. They seem to have taken the advantages of a small body frame – low centre of gravity, close control etc… and coupled this to something which is traditionally at odds with this body type, excellent physical strength and physical endurance. There are plenty of models of small player with either one or the other skill, but nothing on the level of the modern Barca team. Fabregas, for instance, looks nothing like his predecessors who stayed in the Barcelona midfield.

This evolution seems to parallel that of the modern cyclist. First generation EPO doping in cycling was simply an arms race, won by those who were willing to take the most flagrant risks – the prime example being Bjarne“Mr 60%” Riis’ 1996 Tour win. In football though, it didn’t really help. The locus of this movement was in Italy where the style of play offered very little edge to a doper
(though there are exceptions who prove the rule – our John the Baptist of modern footballing doping is surely Mr Edgar Davids): players weren’t running to the limits of their aerobic capacity and the average body shape was already quite large.

The edge from doping in football comes from the ability of modern medicine to take smaller players, who were originally the exception is a team – one or maybe two who would be carried defensively by their team-mates, into the foundation of a team. Barca’s rise has to be considered against a 20 year tendency for the height of a football team to constantly increase in size and weight. This medical slight of hand looks like the effect of micro-dosing, using a cocktail of different body changing medicines on a small scale over a long period of time to boost strength and – perhaps most crucially, help recovery times (the difficult thing isn’t building up a body, it is maintaining it through the demands of a football season).

Now in this analogy, Real are a bit like the modern Team Quickstep, gathering enough players with great natural abilities so in one squad in the hope that at least a few of them should, on any given race, hit their peaks and be in with a chance. Barca are looking more like Quickstep in their incarnation as Team Mapei in Paris-Roubaix in 1996, when they sent three men into the Roubaix Velodrome so far ahead of the rest a spectator could only watch aghast and think, “this cannot be real” – just as I feel when I see Xavi and Iniesta muscling away much larger players out of a midfield battle.

Its a open secret that Operation Puerto (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operaci%C3%B3n_Puerto_doping_case) was shitcanned when it lead to big football and certain tennis players, and I am convinced that at least some part of Spain’s current sporting renaissance is due to men like Fuerntes. I don’t want to start tossing too much dirt around here, but Barca had the ability to give HGH to Messi in-house, and it isn’t like Pep doesn’t have previous regarding performance enhancers. Not that I think Real are paragons of virtue, but PED’s are noticeable in their effects, not intent.

First, I’m not sure Ronaldo’s game has changed in any serious regard since coming to Madrid. He did not have a 40 goal season at United by passing to teammates or turning up shooting chances. The difference is the quality of the team surrounding him – we don’t have centermids of the calibre of the in form Scholes/Carrick of yesteryear. Higuain is good, but not Roooney good.

Second, I understand your point about youth development vs. big signings, but Abidal Alves Toure Keita and Ibra, just to name a few, did not attend the Masia. I think that with big signings come big expectations of immediate returns, but even Florentino Perez, a bastion of credibility, has said he did not expect to win titles this year. Why do you?

Third, in response to PED, I’m pretty sure all athletes are tested in accordance with FIFA rules and regulations. I can’t really ask for more. I do agree with you that Barca has built a style of play around passing in response to the strength of their roster – slick pivoting two footed players. The same can be said of Argentina on a good day. But couldn’t we say the same of Real? If they have size and weight, then why not engage in aerial duels? My article is not so much to criticize Barca’s style of play (Far from it), but rather the assertion that its intellectual monopoly on the term “beauty.”

@Elliott Firstly, Yeah, I agree Ronaldo hasn’t changed much, but I wouldn’t lay it on the players around him, more the pattern of play. Allow me a bit more indulgence:

Let us say there are four levels of managerial competence

1. Manager pairs players up. The manger conceives of the team in terms of partnerships which are picked to complement each other. Centrally for defence, midfield and attack, plus two pairs of full-back + winger. Example: Kevin Keegan.
2. Manger thinks of triads. As above but generally including an midfielder with the pairs around the edges of the formation: forward + forward + attacking midfield; full-back, winger, left sided central midfield etc… Example: Ferguson’s old Man U 4-4-2.
3. Manger conceives of team in positions relative to the ball’s position. The team is selected and drilled to adopt set positions depending on the phase of play and where the ball is on the pitch. Example: Saachi’s Milan.
4. Manager sees as above but can appreciate change over time so the formation is conceived dynamically. Example, Wenger and Guardiola.

Real’s use of the galactico policy effectively denies them even a low level place on this ladder. Instead the manger must only ask himself who the best individuals are, before putting them in a team and just sitting back and watching them go. A kind of compelled level 0 of competence, which takes out the element of preparation or planning (I am not saying Pellegrini is a bad manger, just that he is forced to act like one).

Ferguson’s good Man U teams would only score about 10 goals a season – that is 10 distinct types of goal that they would score over and over again. My personal favourite crazy footballing theory is that it is this quality which defines a truly great team; for the opposition to know what you are going to do (Beckham receives ball at halfway line – Neville makes decoy run overlapping him – Van Nistelroy moves towards back post – Beckham crosses from deep into Van Nistelroy’s path – goal) but not be able to stop you, that is a great side. But for the current Madrid, this is not the policy. Instead, the different elements pull their own way, leading to singular movements every time. And because of this singularity, they are brilliant fun to watch – it is like a short circuit in footballing reality, as you said “You can’t predict where or when the Madrid attack will materialize because the tempo is the key, not the specific decision. Madrid is a series of staccatos where the notes don’t matter, as opposed to a lush Catalan crescendo.”

Secondly, related to the point above, I think Barca’s style is defined in the centre of the pitch, not so much around the edges where the players you mention operate. But these are guys obviously brought in to do a specific job for which there was no home-grown option.

Thirdly, I must express significant surprise at your naivete regarding PED’s in professional sport, but I will refrain from a lengthy, paranoid rant about governing bodies’ complicity and over-riding concern with making their own house appear clean, rather than actually be clean.

Regarding beating Barcelona, forget the aerial route, which just recycles the ball to them more rapidly. I think they put an opposition team in an effective double bind. Either you go 1Vs1 with them, or accept that you will get overloaded in certain areas of the pitch. The disappointing thing is that when a team decides to have a go at Barca, they generally decide to try and prove that they can play the short, slick passing game just as well as Barca. Well, maybe they can, but the Barca style of defence (compression, compression, compression, with cynical fouls as needed) is absolutely suited to countering this style. That is what really disappointed me about Barca – Arsenal. I would have loved to see Arsenal go 1Vs1 all over the pitch, or to see them bring out a bit of a rope-a-dope and exhaust Barca by rapidly switching the ball across the pitch as they tried to compress around it. Instead they played into their hands and received a spanking.

One last indulgence. When thinking about Real whilst writing this, I was reminded of a certain paragraph from Lyotard’s Libidinal Economy, which captures the difference between the comfort of structure and certainty on one hand (Barca’s grey-eyed percentage game); and the love of the singular, the mad, and the unexpected on the other (the polymorphous perversity of Real). Just replace Proust → Joyce with the Galacticos and their very own Dr. Moreau, Florentino Perez :

“One Can, therefore, step twice, and even innumerable times, into the same river, if the river is located by its slope, its banks, its direction, its flow, as it is by any discriminating mind-body; but one never steps twice into he same river quite simply because there is no river, that is what is said by the madman, lover of singularities, be his name Proust, Sterne, Pascal, Nietzsche, Joyce, a madman determined to judge a given swim as unexchangeable for any other, in spite of its generic name, a madman ready to want a proper name, a divine name, for each intensity, and thus to die with each of them, to lose even his memory (river-bed and course), and certainly his own identity. Madness of pathos; but recognise, Unkind one, back to back with this madness, that of the structuralist, who made himself incapable of hearing, in the silence, the crackling masses of flux which circulate in the system, and which are, however, the ‘final cause’ of their operativity.”

@Ell-Ess I understand the debate between a philosophy then players vs player then philosophy, but where do Ibrahimovic and Bendtner fit into this Wenger/Guardiola philosophy? Henry and E’too make more sense to me, yet they were sold….

@elliott Well, Henry is replaced by Van Persie, not Bendtner, and simply because he is better than him. Ibrahimovic rather than Eto’o because of the pace of play. Eto’o running by himself isn’t in keeping with the percentage game we both seem to attribute to Barcelona. Sure, Messi runs too, but always with the team, looking to give it if necessary. That they are both tall seems like a red herring, if that’s where you were going.

Interesting read, but I think the fundamental problem here with your comparison isn’t the vast differences in the sports you’re comparing, but in your conclusion. You liken Barça to Self’s championship winning low-scoring Kansas team, and Real Madrid to Williams high scoring high tempo Kansas team. Except that last season, Barça scored more goals than anyone and this season they’ve scored only 6 less than Real Madrid in La Liga. In this case (and this season), both the half-court and fast break offenses are generating a similar number of goals.

I can’t say that I follow Real Madrid closely, but Estadio Santiago Bernabeu didn’t exactly seem deafening on Saturday (if the feed I watched was at all accurate). It seemed — and I’m willing to be corrected on this — rather full of the sorts of quiet and sedate fans you described in the first paragraph. While I’m not ready, at least at the moment, to make that observation into a moral indictment or anything (as some who enjoy determining what is and what is not valid fandom might), I do think the paragraph starts this piece off on the wrong foot, and undermines the otherwise interesting analogy, by making me suspect you’re arguing in bad faith (which I suppose might be considered the right of the biased fan, but now I’m spinning myself in circles).

If it’s the effete aesthete who raises your hackles, perhaps you’re really called to be a fan of something a bit more “agricultural”. Dunfermline Athletic might do.

(By the way: is “agricultural” not the single best soccer-related adjective the English have given us? I think so.)

@rob I once used a stanza from Shelley’s Hymn to Intellectual Beauty to describe Barcelona. I wouldn’t describe Madrid as a blue-collar team, but I don’t think it’s a massive satiric stretch to say that Starbucks-sipping, grad-school-attending, Orwell-reading, New Republic-editing American fans on the internet lean heavily toward Catalonia.

@rob I definitely get your point on the recent preposterous transfer fees, but Barcelona’s wages really are not so far from Real Madrid’s. I also am not attacking Barcelona’s style/players/coaches – I am attacking the the current media monopoly of philosophical hegemony that their style of play is the apex of “beauty.”

@a quarterback is another useful term!

I am trying not to get too ad hominem here – I did write a part of this piece while at Starbuck’s, but I was drinking a hot cocoa and not watching Barcelona. I also already completed my grad degree. Thus, I am better than the rest of you. ALL OF YOU.

@Brian Phillips (and @Elliot) I don’t disagree with the characterization of the Barca fan (which I’m not, other than in the sense of a generalized appreciation for the team’s talent), but with the presentation of Madrid as an antithesis or antidote to a perceived flaw in the psyche of the Barca fan. But the comment was intended to be — and maybe didn’t come across this way — lighthearted, because I enjoy all the rambling about the Barca-Madrid dichotomy (both here and elsewhere), and I can appreciate that discussions are no fun without dichotomies, even (particularly?) when they’re imperfect.

Also: the new layout is fantastic.

@Elliot says “I am attacking the the current media monopoly of philosophical hegemony that their style of play is the apex of “beauty.””

(After explaining that I was trying to be lighthearted, I’ll now disprove myself.) That’s exactly what I found ironic — Madrid is, in intent, actually quite similar to Barca, in wanting to be at (or having the fan expectation that it should be at) an “apex of beauty”. If you want an antithesis to that aspect of Barca/Barca fan psychology, you don’t want Madrid — where to win is not enough, one must win with style — you want this guy, who couldn’t care less how the ball ended up in the back of the net, so long as it does so on the correct end of the field.

“Ashley Cole stuck to Messi like glue”, I don’t think Cole played in those games. I’m pretty sure that Messi was guarded by a right-footed defender so that he could tackle Messi’s left with his dominant right foot.

The tempo analogy is a good comparison, but I think that Barcelona presses more than any other team so there are slight differences.

The biggest difference for me when comparing basketball and football are what make them beautiful. When I play basketball, it is easy to keep possession, you are holding the ball in your HANDS. Scoring is easy, so teams won’t defend outside the three point line. So if you just pass the ball around the outside of the defense, basketball is boring, so Run and Gun basketball is exciting, because it’s fast, there’s lots of scoring, and it’s difficult to pass through and over defenders.
Possession is hard in football, because you are using your FEET. So the ball is easier to steal and scoring is harder. So when a team can possess the ball and make the team chase them, it is very interesting and beautiful. I’m guessing it would be similar to playing only inside the 3pt line once you enter it and having to dribble the whole time and once you stopped dribbling you have 1 second to pass the ball or it’s a turnover.
I will agree that fast tempo-ed football can be very beautiful because Brazil makes it beautiful and Arsenal did to (when they were winning everything). But when teams just kick the ball into space and let a fast guy chase it, it can get boring sometimes. I mean, that’s what I do when I play football, and I suck. So teams that play one touch and keep the ball, they amaze me.

this blog comment board is like stumbling into plato’s Academy’s sports fans department – the level of intellect here is ridiculous. but mr. arctos, going from pre-shot clock basketball to cow corner – you sir are probably a malfunction of the matrix…

two small things i wanted to add here.

its true that the galactico style is very asphyxiating for a manger, but vincente del bosque really took it to a sublime level. even that side was nothing like the barca side of now, but they seemed to have 7 players all constantly looking for madcap adventures in the opposition half. the center backs were inevitably atrocious, and so casillas would have to be glorious, which he was. and of course there was makelele. it was a very different team, but a joy to watch.

secondly, a lot of madrid’s problems in the last two years have been due to this resignation that they can not beat this barca side. the closest games out of the past four clasicos have involved madrid defending with the paranoia of a pothead, but suffering from the stoner’s lack of motivation when it came to attacking. ronaldo’s disoriented forays into nowheresville seemed to epitomize that. i believe it is possible for madrid to use their ‘in the moment’ style to take on barca, but before the tactics work there has to be belief. all we have seen so far are mixtures of nervous posturing and stoic cynicism.